All eyes were on Mark Warawa this week when the Langley MP began to speak in Parliament.

He had earned the moment, bucking his own party in an appeal to the Speaker that his rights as an MP had been violated when the Conservative whip cut him from the speaking list because of what he was going to say.

Warawa was muzzled because he planned to use a member’s statement to talk about the use of abortion as a tool for gender-selection. That ran afoul of Prime Minister Harper’s edict that abortion was a no-go issue for his caucus.

The speaker ruled against Warawa, but did so in a way that left the door open for the pro-life MP to speak his mind. MPs have always had the right to stand up and be recognized, Speaker Andrew Scheer ruled, and the fact that the Conservative whip didn’t include him on his party’s speakers list didn’t change that.

But just as the Speaker affirmed the rights of individual MPs, Warawa’s response to the ruling confirmed that having a right and feeling free to exercise it are two different things.

Rather than pursue his right to rebel against Harper’s decree, Warawa spoke on the merits of “Langley has Talent,” an annual competition organized by the Rotary Club.

So what happened?

For Sean Holman, who now teaches journalism at Mount Royal University in Calgary after reporting on the B.C. legislature for a decade, it was an all-too familiar display of what he sees as a serious weakness in the way we practise democracy in Canada.

“It’s not the rules that are interfering with the ability of MLAs and MPs to speak out publicly on behalf of their constituents and their own conscience; it’s the culture of the system .”

Holman has just finished a documentary provocatively called “Whipped: The Secret World of Party Discipline,” which is being shown Sunday evening at 7 p.m. in the Alice Mackay Room at the Vancouver Public Library.

It’s about the way the party system saps the ability of elected officials to represent the views of the people they represent, an issue that is especially relevant now that British Columbians have an opportunity on May 14 to pick who they want to send to Victoria to work on their behalf.

“The way parliament is supposed to work under the current rules is you elect an MLA or an MP to represent you in the house, be it the legislature or parliament and that’s not what actually happens,” Holman said in an interview.

What happens is that with rare exceptions, the person you elect will go to Victoria and sit in a party caucus. It’s within that caucus that MPs and MLAs are theoretically free to speak their minds and directly reflect the views of their constituents. Those discussions happen in private and caucus secrecy is considered sacrosanct.

Once the caucus takes a position, or as often happens, is told what position cabinet is taking, MLAs and MPs are expected to toe the line, especially on any issue that is considered a matter of confidence in the government.

“So it strikes me that there is an enormous amount of trust that Canadians have to place in an essentially secretive system of government,” Holman says.

Being part of a party is a choice, even under our system. MLAs and MPs occasionally leave a party or are ejected and sit as independents, but independents are rarely elected. Vicki Huntington was an exception when she won in Delta South in 2009.

While Holman doesn’t like the current system, he concedes that we don’t know what the alternative, in which individual MLAs or MPs had a much larger role, would look like. And he suspects that many Canadians are happy with the way they system works now.

“You may not get a lot of freedom and liberty in the way politics currently operates in this province or in this country but you certainly do get a considerable amount of stability,” he says.

“Look what happens when a minority government emerges. There is all this criticism that the government isn’t able to get anything done; government isn’t able to act on its agenda; government isn’t able to govern.”

And that may reflect say something about whether Canadians want to be engaged.

“Maybe we are comfortable being a nation of the governed rather than being a nation of the self-governed.”

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